It didn't take long for Eric to reach one of the many safehouses his family had scattered throughout the city, and after stitching up his larger wounds himself and bandaging the rest, he immediately collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.
His body was extremely exhausted after all, despite his face not expressing a hint of it whatsoever.
It was only a few hours later in the afternoon that he finally woke back up, and the first thing he immediately did afterwards was to change out of his dirty and blood-stained clothes and put on new ones.
Unfortunately, since the safehouse he was in didn't have much options for him, Eric had to make do with a plain white shirt and casual jeans.
It wasn't really his style, but at the very least it was better than being butt naked.
Once Eric was done dressing up, he immediately turned on the TV that was in the living room and sat on the less than comfortable couch.
And as he expected, the first thing that showed up on the TV screen was a news broadcast reporting on the recent parking garage incident that had occurred just a couple of hours ago.
Eric couldn't help but sigh in his heart as he saw all of the rubble and blood littering the floor in the pictures shown.
He had definitely lost more blood than he had expected, and it was sort of crazy to see how much blood he had actually lost.
It was honestly a miracle that he didn't actually collapse beforehand while on his way here to the safehouse.
Nevertheless, Eric continued to attentively watch the news broadcast as it covered the incident, but since it didn't mention anything else noteworthy after a few minutes, he turned the TV back off.
Afterwards, he walked over to the house windows and peeked outside for a little bit while deep in thought.
Now truthfully, Eric had some ideas in his head as to what he should do next in order to take care of Aurora once and for all.
After all, while Aurora might be extremely cautious about him now, especially since she had failed to kill him once already, he knew for a fact that she would most definitely make a move on him again soon enough.
In fact, he anticipated that since he was so severely injured right now, Aurora would most likely come within the next few days or so to try and take advantage of his weakened state.
Aurora was just the type of person to seize any opportunity presented to her after all, and Eric was completely sure that she was already planning out her next steps to get him at this very moment.
However, the problem with most of his plans was that they required some preparations and time to execute.
None of which were quick or something that could easily be accomplished within a few days.
There was only one idea he had thought about doing that could probably be executed within a few hours, but Eric had been reluctant to actually go through with it.
It was an extremely desperate plan that was sorta more suited as a last resort after all, and besides, it was sort of similar to the first plan he had tried in terms of recklessness.
As such, Eric was in a dilemma at the moment, and he didn't really know the best course of action to take.
"Sigh, if only I was given a smarter brain to begin with, then maybe this wouldn't be so hard for me." Eric muttered loudly.
Unfortunately, the only ones in this world who could probably help with something like that were the types of people that Eric didn't want to associate with at all.
Just as Eric was thinking about what to do next while glancing out of the window every so often however, he suddenly noticed a certain someone walking down the streets across his safehouse seemingly looking around for something.
And he was absolutely shocked to see that certain someone.
Why?
It was because...
'What the hell is Aria doing here?'
No seriously, what kind of coincidence was this?
Even though it wasn't really described in full detail where the protagonist and her friends lived in the novel, he knew that Aria's apartment was located somewhere close to the college that she goes to with Aurora.
And the safehouse he was currently in was in the complete opposite direction of where the college was at!
So why as Aria here, and what was she looking for?
Eric's mind was filled with all sorts of questions, mainly wondering if Aurora would actually have the audacity to involve her best friend like this, and before he knew it, Aria had already noticed him staring at her through the windows.
For a split second, the two just stared at each other blankly, almost as if time itself had frozen for a moment, but eventually Eric regained his senses again and backed away from the windows.
He didn't want to see Aria anyways, and he was pretty sure that she probably didn't want to see him either.
So Eric went back over to the couch and sat down in order to continue thinking.
However, as fate would have it, the doorbell of the safehouse began ringing a couple seconds later, and Eric frowned deeply.
'Tsk, seriously?'
Eric couldn't help but be a little bit annoyed and pretended that he didn't hear the doorbell ring at all, especially since he didn't have the energy to deal with her right now.
But the doorbell wouldn't stop ringing, and so after about a minute later, Eric finally gave in and went to answer the door.
"What a coincidence again, Miss Aria." Eric reluctantly opened the door and spoke first without an ounce of emotion in his tone.
"...It wasn't a coincidence." Aria looked at Eric's severely injured body and hesitated for a bit before replying about a few seconds later.
"Hm? What do you mean by that?" Eric couldn't help but raise his vigilance and narrowed his eyes at her.
If Aurora had actually sent Aria here on purpose even though that wasn't like her at all to do something that could endanger her best friend's life, then he needed to prepare himself for whatever was to come.
"I... I followed you here. From the parking garage." Aria said as she continued to look at the bandages covering Eric's body.
"Oh." Eric wasn't surprised to hear about this.
Even though he knew that Aria hated him a lot to a certain degree solely just based on his two interactions with her so far and the fact that he was a man, he also knew that Aria was also a very curious person at heart.
In the novel, it paired up well with her stubbornness after all, and actually helped the protagonist significantly at the later parts of the novel when Aria was much more involved in the story.
That was why Eric also wasn't initially surprised when Aria came up to him earlier today and wanted to know how he knew about her cancer.
Her character was simply just like that.
And while he didn't know how much Aria had actually seen in the parking garage earlier or how she even knew he was there to begin with, it honestly didn't really matter to him at this point.
As long as she doesn't report him to the police and isn't working with Aurora right now to inadvertently kill him in the end, which seems unlikely at the moment, then everything else was fine.
"Okay, well how did you know I was in this area, though? Considering that you're showing up only now and not hours earlier." Eric questioned curiously.
In response to Eric's question, Aria stared at him blankly for a very brief moment, then stepped aside and pointed to the ground beneath her.
It wasn't obvious what she was pointing to at first, but after taking a closer look at it, Eric realized that there was a small drop of blood right by the foot of the doorway.
"Ah, I see... that's how." Eric slightly nodded his head in understanding and then looked behind Aria to see how much more drops of blood he had unknowingly left behind leading up to his safehouse.
And while there weren't that many drops of blood surprisingly, there was still enough leading back to the safehouse to potentially cause him some troubles with the authorities if they were ever to discover it.
"Thank you for informing me then I suppose... so, what do you need? If it's about the conversation that we had earlier this morning then I have nothing else to tell you." Eric said as he shifted his focus back towards Aria.
"It's not about that, it's more like... um, can I come inside first? This might take awhile." Aria asked as she tried to look at Eric directly in the eyes this time, but couldn't because it still made her feel very uncomfortable just looking at him.
Eric thought about it for a little bit before ultimately nodding his head and then moving aside from the doorway to let her in.
Once Aria stepped inside, she couldn't help but begin looking around the house for a bit and was shocked to see how old the entire interior looked.
Although it didn't looked entirely abandoned, there was no doubt that this house was most likely not used for very long periods of time, and the amount of dusts proved that.
But Aria didn't comment on it and instead went ahead and sat at the dusty dining table.
Eric followed closely behind her as well and sat on the other side of the table.
Then after a long minute of silence between the two, Eric finally broke the ice and spoke up first.
"So, what is it that you wanted to discuss about?" Eric asked as he looked straight into Aria's eyes.
Aria didn't reply back immediately but instead closed her eyes took a few deep breaths first.
Then once she felt that she was ready enough, she opened her eyes back up and met his gaze, finally asking the question that had been plaguing mind ever since she saw him back at the parking garage.
"Just.... what are you?"